Aston Martin served notice ahead of next weekend's 24 Hours of Le Mans, with Tom Gamble topping the official Test Day on Sunday in the No. 007 Heart of Racing Valkyrie and pushing the championship's heavyweights onto the back foot.
Gamble's 3m26.293s, set midway through the second of two three-hour afternoon sessions, was the fastest lap of the day and put the British-built Hypercar 0.108s clear of Brendon Hartley's No. 8 Toyota TR010 Hybrid. Norman Nato was third in the Jota-run Cadillac, more than half a second adrift, with the Signatech Alpine and the works Toyotas and Ferraris bunched behind.
"Overall a pretty successful day. You don't know how you'll be going into it against everyone," Gamble said. "Now we're at the sharp end. If we can stay like this for the race, we may be on the podium, but I'm not sure if the field have shown their hand completely or not."
That caveat matters. Test Day rarely reveals true intentions, with teams running different fuel loads and tyre programmes, and Toyota in particular treated the day as a data exercise rather than a qualifying simulation.
"The test went pretty well overall and I'm happy to be back here at Le Mans. We have learned a lot about our TR010 HYBRID today," said Kamui Kobayashi, the Toyota team principal who also drove the No. 7. "We are pretty much where we expected to be in terms of set-up."
The day was not without drama for the Japanese marque. The No. 8 Toyota tangled with an Algarve Pro LMP2 car in the morning, an incident that brought out a red flag but caused only repairable damage.
"It was a solid day and nice to be back at Le Mans with the TR010 HYBRID. It looks positive and we seem to have made a step compared to last year," said Ryo Hirakawa. "The accident in the morning was really unfortunate."
Among the talking points further down the order, Le Mans debutant Genesis squeezed into the top 10 in the Hypercar class, Paul-Loup Chatin edging the South Korean marque's No. 19 GMR-001 ahead of Stoffel Vandoorne's Peugeot 9X8. In LMP2, Job van Uitert was quickest for IDEC Sport, while AF Corse topped LMGT3.
With the grid covered by barely more than a second at the front of Hypercar, the 94th running of the great endurance classic on 13-14 June is shaping up as one of the hardest to call in years. Aston Martin has fired the first shot. Whether it is bluff or genuine pace will only be known when the flag drops.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/aston-martins-valkyrie-tops-le-mans-test-day-ahead-of-toyota). Visit for full coverage.*
